R⸺ outlined an impression he had in Naples one day during a sirocco of the imminence of his own death. It was evidently an isolated experience and bored me a little as I could have said a lot myself about that. When he finished I drew from my pocket an envelope with my name and three addresses scribbled on it to help the police in case of syncope as I explained. I have carried this with me for several years and at one time a flask of brandy.
other’s armour, which previous exchange of confidences makes it easy to find. Neither of us hesitates to make use of such private confessions, yet our love is so strong that we can afford to take any liberty. There is, in fact, a fearful joy in testing the strength of our affection by searching for cutting rejoinders—to see the effect. We rig up one another’s cherished ideals like Aunt Sallies and then knock them down, we wax sarcastic, satirical, contemptuous in turn, we wave our hands animatedly (hand-waving is a great trick with both of us), get flushed, point with our fingers, and thump the table to clinch some bit of repartee. Yet it’s all smoke. Our love is unassailable—it’s like the law of gravitation, you cannot dispute it, it underlies our existence, it is the air we breathe.
N⸺ is charming, and thought we were quarrelling, and therefore intervened on his side!
Went to see the Irish Players in The Playboy. Sitting in front of me was a charming little Irish girl accompanied by a male clod with red-rimmed eyes like a Bull-terrier’s, a sandy, bristly moustache like a housemaid’s broom, and a face like a gluteal mass, and a horrid voice that crepitated rather than spoke.
She was dark, with shining blue eyes, and a delightful little nose of the utmost import to every male who should gaze upon her. Between the acts, the clod hearkened to her vivacious conversation—like an enchanted bullock. Her vivacity was such that the tip of her nose moved up and down for emphasis and by the end of the Third Act I was captured entirely. Lucky dog, that clod!
After the play this little Irish maiden caught my eye and it became a physical impossibility for me to check a smile—and oh! Heavens!—she gave me a smile in return. Precisely five seconds later, she looked again to see if I was still smiling—I was—and we then smiled broadly and openly on one another—her smile being the timorous ingénue’s not the glad eye of a femme de joie. Later, on the railway platform whither I followed her, I caught her eye again (was ever so lucky a fellow?), and we got into the same carriage. But so did the clod—ah! dear, was ever so unlucky a fellow? Forced to occupy a seat some way off, but she caught me trying to see her through a midnight forest of opera hats, lace ruffles, projecting ears and fat noses.
Curse! Left her at High Street Station and probably will never see her again. This is a second great opportunity. The first was the girl on Lundy Island. These two women I shall always regret. There must be so many delightful and interesting persons in London if only I could get at them.
Rushed off to tell R⸺ about my little Irish girl. Her face has been “shadowing” me all day.
A violent argument with R⸺ re marriage. He says Love means appropriation, and is taking the most elaborate precautions to forfend passion—just as if it were a militant suffragette. Every woman he meets he first puts into a long quarantine, lest perchance she carries the germ of the infectious disease. He quotes Hippolytus and talks like a medieval ascetic. Himself, I imagine, he regards as a valuable but brittle piece of Dresden china which must be saved from rough handling and left unmolested to pursue its high and dusty destiny—an old crock as I warned him. By refusing to plunge into life he will live long and be a well preserved man, but scarcely a living man—a mummy rather. I told him so amid much laughter.
“You’re a reactionary,” says he.
“Yes, but why should a reactionary be a naughty boy?”
My ironical fate lured me this evening into another discussion on marriage in which I had to take up a position exactly opposite to the one I defended yesterday against R⸺. In fact, I actually subverted to my own pressing requirements some of R⸺’s own arguments! The argument, of course, was with Her.
Marriage, I urged, was an economic trap for guileless young men, and for my part (to give myself some necessary stiffening) I did not intend to enter upon any such hazardous course, even if I had the chance. Miss ⸻ said I was a funk—to me who the day before had been hammering into R⸺ my principle of “Plunge and damn the consequences.” I was informed I was an old woman afraid to go out without an umbrella, an old tabby cat afraid to leave the kitchen fire, etc., etc.
“Yes, I am afraid to go out without an umbrella,” I argued formally, “when it’s raining cats and dogs. As long as I am dry, I shall keep dry. As soon as I find myself caught in the rain or victimised by a passion, I shan’t be afraid of falling in love or getting wet. It would be a misadventure, but I am not going in search of one.”
All the same the discussion was very galling, for I was acting a part.
… The truth is I have philandered abominably with her. I know it. And now I am jibbing at the idea of marriage. … I am such an egotist, I want, I believe, a Princess of the Blood Royal.
Some days ago sent a
Вы читаете The Journal of a Disappointed Man
